Battle of New Market Heights: USCT Soldiers Proved Their Heroism
On a gunfire-swept slope near Richmond on September 29, 1864, USCT soldiers stood to the test and proved black men made good professional troops. Fourteen of them received the Medal of Honor for their bravery.
By Gordon Berg As the morning sun burned through the fog along the New Market Road about eight miles southeast of Richmond on the autumn morning of September 29, 1864, it revealed a scene of carnage and human wreckage. Dead infantrymen in coats that were a familiar shade of Union blue covered the slopes before New Market Heights. But most of the faces of the dead and maimed were black.
Events leading to the Battle of New Market Heights began during the blistering summer of 1864, when overall Federal commander Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant directed the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, to relentlessly push the Confederates south from the Rappahannock River toward the Appomattox River. To counter that strategy and stop the Union drive, General Robert E. Lee put his undermanned Army of Northern Virginia into a complex array of trench lines and fortified strongpoints defending Richmond and its supply routes running through Petersburg.
In addition to watching Grant's powerful army, Lee also had to keep a wary eye on the Army of the James, a force of 35,000 men in the XVIII and X corps and a cavalry division, entrenched in and around Williamsburg, Va. Commanded by the militarily inept but politically well-connected Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, that army boasted the largest contingent of black troops of any Union force. Butler had used his political influence to get appointed commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, and then made himself commander of the Army of the James.
During the winter of 1863-64, Butler sent raiding parties beyond his fortified lines to find black recruits to bolster the ranks of his regiments of U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). General Order 46, issued December 5, 1863, made his position clear: "The recruitment of colored troops has become the settled purpose of the Government....It is the duty of every officer and soldier to aid in this recruiting, irrespective of personal predilection."
Though black troops had been permitted to join the Union Army, they were not allowed to gain commissions and were led by white officers. Black units were also placed in their own brigades. In the Army of the James, black troops made up Brig. Gen. William Birney's Colored Brigade of the X Corps. Brigadier General Charles J. Paine's 3rd Division of the XVIII Corps was made up of three all-USCT brigades: the 1st Brigade led by Colonel John Holman, the 2nd Brigade commanded by Colonel Alonzo G. Draper and Colonel Samuel Duncan's 3rd Brigade.
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Major General Benjamin Butler believed in the merits of black soldiers, but he also wanted to use their efforts to pad his own reputation. To his credit, however, he did carefully plan his late-September operation to avoid another Crater-type fiasco. (Primedia Archive) |
Early in May 1864, Butler moved his integrated army up to the vicinity of Bermuda Hundred on the James River. He fortified and then made several tentative and unsuccessful attempts to breach the Richmond defenses. On May 16, an assault by Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard forced Butler back into his trenches. Grant caustically described Butler's army "as completely shut off from further operations against Richmond as if it had been in a bottle tightly corked."
With Butler temporarily neutralized, Grant ordered the Army of the Potomac out of its trench lines at Cold Harbor on the night of June 12, marching 100,000 men almost 50 miles over rough and swampy terrain to the south side of the James River. With a presidential election only a few months away, Grant wanted a decisive victory to bolster the spirits of the war-weary North. Instead, he found himself in the frustrating siege of Petersburg.
Repulsed at every turn by the resourceful Lee, he finally listened to a complex plan proposed by General Butler on September 20 that Grant hoped would draw Lee's attention and force him to redeploy troops north of the James, allowing the Army of the Potomac to launch a coordinated attack against the South Side Railroad, a critical supply line into Petersburg. And if Butler succeeded in capturing Richmond, Grant reasoned, so much the better.
Early on the evening of September 28, Butler called a council of war to give his commanders, Maj. Gen. David Birney of the X Corps, Maj. Gen. Edward O.C. Ord of the XVIII Corps and Cavalry Division commander Brig. Gen. August V. Kautz, the details of the operation. In Butler's mind, the primary objective remained the capture of Richmond, not drawing forces away from Petersburg.
The plan called for two divisions of Ord's XVIII Corps, on the left wing, to make a surprise crossing of the James at Aiken's Landing (after building a pontoon bridge across the river in the pre-dawn hours before the attack) and move up the Varnia Road to capture Confederate Fort Harrison. Ord's forces would then wheel west and destroy the Confederate bridges at and above Chaffin's Bluff, and race up the Osborn Turnpike for Richmond.
At precisely the same time, on the right wing, Birney's X Corps, plus Paine's USCT regiments detailed from the XVIII Corps, would cross the James River, advance from Deep Bottom, carry New Market Heights and strike out for Richmond on the New Market Road. Finally, Kautz's cavalry would move to the Darbytown Road and, when New Market Heights was cleared, ride hard for the Confederate capital.
Paine's black soldiers were to spearhead the attack on New Market Heights because Butler, as he put it, "wanted to convince myself whether the negro troops will fight, and whether I can take, with the negroes" a stronghold that had denied previous Union attack. Butler had been an early advocate for arming black men, and had done so when he was overseeing the occupation of New Orleans in 1862.
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